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1 Introduction to Reinforced Concrete

Structural Concrete
The term structural concrete indicates all types of concrete used in structural applications. Structural concrete may be plain, reinforced, prestressed, or partially prestressed concrete; in addition, concrete is used in composite design. Composite design is used for any structural member, such as beams
or columns, when the member contains a combination of concrete and steel shapes.

Structural concrete is one of the materials commonly used to design all types of buildings. Its two component materials, concrete and steel, work together to form structural members that can resist many types of loadings. The key to its performance lies in strengths that are complementary: Concrete
resists compression and steel reinforcement resists tension forces.

Historical Background
Timeline Historical Event

1760 John Smeaton used concrete in Britain. The walls of the lock in Calder River were made of stones filled in with concrete

1796 J. Parker discovered Roman natural cement, and 15 years later Vicat burned a

mixture of clay and lime to produce cement

1824 Joseph Aspdin manufactured portland cement in Wakefield, Britain. It was called portland cement because when it hardened it resembled stone from the quarries of the Isle of Portland.

1832 François Marte Le Brun built a concrete house in Moissac, France in which he used concrete arches of 18-ft span. He used concrete to build a school in St. Aignan in 1834 and a church in Corbarièce in 1835.

1854 Joseph Louis Lambot exhibited a small rowboat made of reinforced concrete at the Paris Exposition. In the same year, W. B. Wilkinson of England obtained a patent for a concrete floor reinforced by twisted cables.

1855 The Frenchman François Cignet obtained his first patent in 1855 for his system of iron bars, which were embedded in concrete floors and extended to the supports. One year later, he added nuts at the screw ends of the bars, and in 1869, he published
a book describing the applications of reinforced concrete.
1867 Joseph Monier, who obtained his patent in Paris on July 16, 1867, was given credit for the invention of reinforced concrete . He made garden tubs and pots of concrete reinforced with iron mesh, which he exhibited in Paris in 1867. In 1873, he
registered a patent to use reinforced concrete in tanks and bridges, and four years later, he registered another patent to use it in beams and columns
1875 A reinforced concrete house was built by W. E.Ward near Port Chester, New York. It used reinforced concrete for walls, beams, slabs, and staircases. P. B. Write wrote in the American Architect and Building News in 1877 describing the applications of
reinforced concrete in Ward’s house as a new method in building construction.
1877 In the United States, Thaddeus Hyatt conducted flexural tests on 50 beams that contained iron bars as tension reinforcement and published the results in 1877. He found that both concrete and steel can be assumed to behave in a homogeneous
manner for all practical purposes. This assumption was important for the design of reinforced concrete members using elastic theory. He used prefabricated slabs in his experiments and considered prefabricated units to be best cast in T-sections and
placed side by side to form a floor slab. Hyatt is generally credited with developing the principles upon which the analysis and design of reinforced concrete are now based.
1879 E. L. Ransome, head of the Concrete Steel Company in San Francisco, used reinforced concrete in 1879 and deformed bars for the first time in 1884. During 1889 to 1891, he built the two-story Leland Stanford Museum in San Francisco using
reinforced concrete. He also built a reinforced concrete bridge in San Francisco. In 1900, after Ransome introduced the reinforced concrete skeleton, the thick wall system started to disappear in construction. He registered the skeleton type of structure
in 1902 using spiral reinforcement in the columns, as was suggested by Armand Considére of France. A. N. Talbot, of the University of Illinois, and F. E. Turneaure and M. O. Withney, of the University ofWisconsin, conducted extensive tests on concrete
to determine

its behavior, compressive strength, and modulus of elasticity. 

1879 In Germany, G. A. Wayass bought the French Monier patent in 1879 and published his book on Monier methods of construction in 1887. Rudolph Schuster bought the patent rights in Austria, and the name of Monier spread throughout Europe, which is
the main reason for crediting Monier as the inventor of reinforced concrete.
1900 The Ministry of Public Works in France called for a committee headed by Armand Considére, chief engineer of roads and bridges, to establish specifications for reinforced concrete, which were published in 1906.
1928 Reinforced concrete was further refined by introducing some precompression in the tension zone to decrease the excessive cracks. This refinement was the preliminary introduction of partial and full prestressing. Eugene Freyssinet established the
practical technique of using prestressed concrete.
1915 Research was conducted on axially loaded columns and creep effects

on concrete.
1940 Eccentrically loaded columns were investigated. Ultimate-strength design started to receive special attention, in addition to diagonal tension and prestressed concrete. The American Concrete Institute Code (ACI Code) specified the use of ultimate-
strength design in 1963 and included this method in all later codes. The method is called in the current ACI code the strength design method. Building codes and specifications for the design of reinforced concrete structures are established in most
countries, and research continues on developing new applications and more economical designs.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Reinforced Concrete

Reinforced concrete, as a structural material, is widely used in many types of structures. It is competitive with steel if economically designed and executed.

The advantages of reinforced concrete can be summarized as follows:

1. It has a relatively high compressive strength.

2. It has better resistance to fire than steel.

3. It has a long service life with low maintenance cost.

4. In some types of structures, such as dams, piers, and footings, it is the most economical structural material.

5. It can be cast to take the shape required, making it widely used in precast structural components. It yields rigid members with minimum apparent deflection.

The disadvantages of reinforced concrete can be summarized as follows:

1. It has a low tensile strength of about one-tenth of its compressive strength.

2. It needs mixing, casting, and curing, all of which affect the final strength of concrete.

3. The cost of the forms used to cast concrete is relatively high. The cost of form material and artisanry may equal the cost of concrete placed in the forms.

4. It has a low compressive strength as compared to steel (the ratio is about 1:10, depending on materials), which leads to large sections in columns of multistory buildings.

5. Cracks develop in concrete due to shrinkage and the application of live loads.

Safety Provisions
Structural members must always be proportioned to resist loads greater than the service or actual load in order to provide proper safety against failure. In the strength design method, the member is designed to resist factored loads, which are obtained by multiplying the service loads by load factors.
The American Concrete Institute (ACI) Code and the Chapter 4 of the National Structural Code of the Philippines (NSCP) present specific values of load factors to be used in the design of concrete structures.

In addition to load factors, the ACI Code  and the NSCP specify another factor to allow an additional reserve in the capacity of the structural member. The nominal strength is generally calculated using an accepted analytical procedure based on statistics and equilibrium; however, in order to account for
the degree of accuracy within which the nominal strength can be calculated, and for adverse variations in materials and dimensions, a strength reduction factor, 𝜙, should be used in the strength design method.

A safe design is achieved when the structure’s strength, obtained by multiplying the nominal strength by the reduction factor, 𝜙, exceeds or equals the strength needed to withstand the factored loadings:

Where:

Given a load factor of 1.2 for dead load and a load factor of 1.6 for live load, the overall safety factor for a structure loaded by a dead load, D, and a live load, L, is

The factors of safety for the various values of 𝜙 and L/D ratios are as follows:

For members subjected to flexure (beams), with tension-controlled sections, 𝜑=0.9, and the factor of safety ranges between 1.33 for L/D=0 and 1.67 for L/D=3. These values are less than those specified by the ACI Code 318 Appendix C of 1.56 for L/D=0 and 1.81 for L/D=3.0 based on load factors of
1.4 for dead load and 1.7 for live load. This reduction ranges between 17 and 8%, respectively.

Structural Concrete Elements

Structural concrete can be used for almost all buildings, whether single story or multistory. The concrete building may contain some or all of the following main structural elements, which are explained in detail in other chapters of the book:

Slabs are horizontal plate elements in building floors and roofs. They may carry gravity loads as well as lateral loads. The depth of the slab is usually very small relative to its length or width (Module 6).
Beams are long, horizontal, or inclined members with limited width and depth. Their main

function is to support loads from slabs (Module 3 and 4).

Columns are critical members that support loads from beams or slabs. They may be subjected to axial loads or axial loads and moments (Module 5).
Frames are structural members that consist of a combination of beams and columns or slabs, beams, and columns. They may be statically determinate or statically indeterminate frames.
Footings are pads or strips that support columns and spread their loads directly to the soil.
Walls are vertical plate elements resisting gravity as well as lateral loads as in the case of basement walls.
Stairs are provided in all buildings either low or high rise.